I’m riding the Amtrak for the first time.

I was born in the US, in Crystal City, actually. But I moved pretty soon afterward with my grandparents to my father’s hometown in China. I had my first experience on an airplane at less than one year old. In fact, my first word was “fei”, the Chinese word for “fly”. I would always clap my hands and exclaim, “fei! fei!” anytime an airplane passed by.

Despite the fact I first verbalized the action of airplanes, I really prefer trains. After my trans-pacific flight with my grandparents, we took an overnight train ride from Beijing to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, followed by a five hour bus before finally arriving in Jianli, the small town from which my dad was the first ever to travel to the US. It must have been then that I fell in love with trains. I returned to Jianli every few years or so, and my favorite part of the 48 hour journey is when I was rocked and lulled to sleep by the motion of the train.

I gradually forgot my romance with trains. The toy trains were packed away and I stopped visiting Jianli since the death of my great-grandma. But I must’ve subconsciously remembered, because in college when I couldn’t sleep or was stressed out by pending exams, I could listen to train sounds from a white noise iPhone app and feel instantly relaxed. Recently I bugged my youngest brother to visit Chinatown with me. He was reluctant, but while we were on the metro he suddenly remembered how my mom would take him to ride the metro back and forth, back and forth, just because he liked to sit on the train.

Now I remember. Although I have ridden the train in China and the bullet train of Japan, I have never taken the Amtrak. I usually take the Megabus because it’s much cheaper, but this time I came on business so someone else paid for my ticket. Unfortunately for my wallet, I don’t think I will be able to revert back to Megabus. The leg space, the comfort, the view, the rhythm. Yes, I will be a train-person for life.

—

Update: I am now in the cafe car and the food options suck. $5 for a frozen pizza? Man. This is not at all like the trains in the movies that serve gourmet food. Oh well, at least they serve food, that’s already a 1 up on Megabus.

View from the train on the way to DC. I guess its the Delaware River?

Riding the train is a post from: The Trouble With Crystal

The incident has sparked a huge national debate about the condition of the Chinese moral spirit. While I have my own opinions about that, I don’t want to point specifically to Chinese morality. I remember the first time I heard about Kitty Genovese in AP Psych class, and how a dozen witnesses heard her cries for help as she was stabbed and raped to death.

The lack of compassion for others was what drove me into medicine, and in particular, the study of infectious disease. In my freshman year of college, I could barely keep my heart from pouring out my body as I watched the ostracization of HIV+ children in China as documented in “The blood of Yingzhou district”.  People affected by infectious diseases suffer a double-edged sword of physical and social consequences; no one wants to associate with a sick person who either committed a supposedly immoral act or can transmit the disease to others. I wanted to become a doctor who could provide those affected by a stigmatized illness the compassion and care they needed.

As it was the social impacts of disease that first attracted me to medicine, so too do I increasingly realize that the solution must lie in the social, not medical realm. Medicine can treat or cure, but only a shift in mindset can address the root causes. People need a new moral mindset that does not disparage these individuals in the first place. Thinking these thoughts as I study detailed and obscure anatomy only serves to depress me.

I want to share an excerpt from the foreword to one of Lu Xun’s books, A Call to Arms. Lu Xun is one of the most (if not the most) celebrated writer of modern Chinese literature, who rejected traditional Chinese culture as morally corrupt, and wrote in order to “awaken” the Chinese people. In fact, he was originally a medical student but discarded that profession in favor of literature. He writes…

These inklings took me to a provincial medical college in Japan. I dreamed a beautiful dream that on my return to China I would cure patients like my father, who had been wrongly treated, while if war broke out I would serve as an army doctor, at the same time strengthening my countrymen’s faith in reformation.

I do not know what advanced methods are now used to reach microbiology, but at that time lantern slides were used to show the microbes; and if the lecture ended early, the instructor might show slides of natural scenery or news to fill up the time. This was during the Russo-Japanese War, so there were many war films, and I had to join in the clapping and cheering in the lecture hall along with the other students. It was a long time since I had seen any compatriots, but one day I saw a film showing some Chinese, one of whom was bound, while many others stood around him. They were all strong fellows but appeared completely apathetic. According to the commentary, the one with his hands bound was a spy working for the Russians, who was to have his head cut off by the Japanese military as a warning to others, while the Chinese beside him had come to enjoy the spectacle.

Before the term was over I had left for Tokyo, because after this film I felt that medical science was not so important after all. The people of a weak and backward country, however strong and healthy they may be, can only serve to be made examples of, or to witness such futile spectacles; and it doesn’t really matter how many of them die of illness. The most important thing, therefore, was to change their spirit, and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I determined to promote a literary movement.

Lu Xun, I need your genius mind, bold spirit, and big courage. The full foreword can be found here.

A two year old Chinese girl, a celebrated writer of modern Chinese literature, and a lost and confused medical student is a post from: The Trouble With Crystal

“Let’s take a gamble,” he whispered.

“Let me come inside of you, and if you are pregnant, we’ll marry and live the rest of our lives together.”

Any objective 3^rd party would look at this situation and warn the girl, “DON’T DO IT! ARE YOU CRAZY?!” In any case, that’s what I wish I had told myself. There’s something numbing about sexual moments that leave any trace of rationality in that fuzzy place far away. It’s there, but you can’t quite make out its outline, like an old friend from long ago. In its place tugs my guilty desire for romanticism and adventure. The thrill of a risk, and the remote chance of abandoning my ivy-grown life for the simple, rustic lifestyle in the Chinese countryside – like one of those princess-meets-peasant type fairytales. Truthfully, I almost wanted him to get me pregnant.

As soon as we finished, I fell back down to reality. Well, not quite. I went to the opposite extreme and obsessed over the paranoid possibility that I was now HIV positive. My researcher-hat thinking took the reins. He came from a low-income, low-education background, I reasoned, both factors associated with HIV infection. He had had one other partner before, and they didn’t use condoms. He’s never been tested for STD’s. I was going to die of HIV.

That was the last time I saw him, because the next day I flew back to school. I immediately made an appointment for an HIV test. The nurse was nice enough, but I was turned off by her – perhaps a little too unfairly.

“Why are you getting an HIV test today?”

“Because I had unprotected sex.” Why else…

“Was this consensual?” Her straight-faced detachment almost annoyed me.

“Yes, of course.” Why is she asking so many questions. I thought I could just get the test and leave.

“Have you thought about taking emergency contraception?”

I hadn’t even thought about the risk of pregnancy. She showed me the relative risks of HIV and pregnancy. In 20 years, she had seen nine students test positive for HIV, while pregnancy? Too frequent to even remember. Pregnancy was the much more real possibility, but somehow in the whole paranoia mess, I had completely neglected it. I just hear so much scare-talk, about how AIDS is so deadly. Everybody’s talking about it nowadays.

Later I thought about what made me so uncomfortable in the nurse’s office. She was just trying to help. I was defensive – I knew I had done something I shouldn’t have, and I didn’t really want to explore why I did. However, I didn’t really have any protection against repeating that behavior – other than vowing to “never again”. There was also the hypocriticalness of my role as a researcher on HIV, someone who should know the risks, someone ultimately hoping to promote safe practices – and here I was encouraging others to do something I couldn’t even do.

I am now an HIV counselor in my school, providing students with counseling and testing. I don’t tell them what to do. I try to understand and reframe their behavioral motivations. Sometimes, prescriptions can only go so far.

Written as an empathy building exercise for my class on HIV.

How I found myself getting my blood drawn to test for HIV… is a post from: The Trouble With Crystal

Tian Hao was a migrant worker I had met in Beijing when he delivered Italian food to my apartment. A week later he was introducing me as his nu peng you, girlfriend.

For the two weeks that I had remaining in Beijing before returning to school, he moved into my apartment. We came home from work and ate dinner while watching TV. He was always grinning and joking about how he would make a lot of money by turning his family apple farm into an apple juice company. Then he would fly to America to live with me and work as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant.

While he was helping clean up the night before my flight, he suddenly took a serious tone, and said, broom in hand, “I will miss these past few weeks with you. It gave me the feeling of having a family again.” The disparity of our lives was like an elephant in front of me. I was returning to my world of intellectualism and comfort (almost pampering). Being with him for two weeks was like my voyage into a rural and romantic world. But it was just a voyage, and people have to return from voyages at some point.

It was a voyage for him too. The next night, he would return to his one room (could you even call it an apartment?) shared with three other migrant workers. Where at night it was so cold, they layered blanket upon blanket brought from their rural hometowns. Where the walls and floors were dirty and grimy, the bathroom was shared with the entire hall, and nobody ever bothered to clean since they would probably find a new job in a new city few months later anyway.

When I left in the cab, he brought me some fruits from his family farm. Inside the bag was a few chopped apples and a lone pear. “I couldn’t part the pear,” he told me, “because then that would really be goodbye”.  (Pear, in Chinese, is li, a homophone with apart. To split a pear is to split apart).

On the airplane, I was thinking about that moment when the cab drove away, and our hands pulled away. I suck at writing poetry, but the image inspired me to scribble a few verses:

His hands.
Tanned mud faded with sweat,
short stubbed fingers,
dirt caught in between his nails,
callused palms that were rough to the touch.

Her hands.
Porcelain pale padded with comfort,
long delicate fingers,
tips finely manicured, except
a lone callus swollen from a lifetime of script.

Their hands.
Fingers laced,
a checkerboard of two worlds
colliding for a brief moment.
As the cab pulls away she pulls her arm inside,
and rolls up the window.

And the Chinese pop song by Jay Chou played in my head, “海鸟跟鱼相爱”.
The seagull and the fish fell in love

Migrant Worker: Parting the Pear is a post from: The Trouble With Crystal

It was 2:30 am. I had to work the next day. The Migrant Worker stood in the doorway as I said goodbye and thank you for a great evening. “I’ll miss you,” he said. I only smiled. As I was about to close the door, he leaned in and kissed me. It was a rough, gritty, kiss – the kind that used too much teeth and not enough affection. Or maybe he just didn’t know how to kiss well.

1:15 pm. He had just gotten off his morning shift as a bicycle delivery boy at the Italian restaurant down the street, and had to return to work for the dinner rush at 3. We were watching the Chinese equivalent of animal planet together on my couch. He puts his arms around me, and moments later we’re frantically grabbing at each other. He starts to carry me to the bed, when I ask if he has a condom.

“No,” he responds with a scoff, “I never use those.”

“Then I am not going to have sex with you until you go to the store and buy some.”

It is almost time for work. We’ll have to wait until later.

11:15 pm. He bikes with me standing in the back to the pharmacy next to the restaurant where he works. I start to walk in when I notice that he’s not following me.

“Aren’t you coming?” I ask.

“No, are you kidding? I work next door. People know me.”

“Whatever you say,” I shrug.

Inside the pharmacy are two nurses and a male customer. The store has a U shaped glass case housing most of their products, with a central island glass case showing off condoms. The male customer was half-jokingly, half angrily scolding the nurses.

“Why do you display these kinds of things right here in front for everyone to see?”

At that moment I coolly walked up to the nurses and asked to purchase a package of “those things”. The man stared at me dumbfounded. That girl is a slut. Who uses condoms anyway? Why is the girl buying the condoms? She must have AIDS. I guessed at what he was thinking.

The Migrant Worker was no where to be found. I scanned up and down the street before I noticed him on the other side. “I didn’t want people to see you walk out of there and then come home with me,” he explained.

“How do you use this thing?”
“Can’t we do it just once without it?”
“It makes me feel less pleasure, I can’t come.”
“My ex-girlfriend never made me use one.”

Despite his protests, that night I had great, protected, sex with the coolest Chinese migrant worker I know.

Do we have to use a condom? is a post from: The Trouble With Crystal

What kind of 30+ man makes friends with 20 year old girls? I felt pretty dejected after I realized the cute policeman was already married. So dejected, in fact, that I decided to take revenge by asking to dinner the Migrant Worker whose calls I had been avoiding all week. Needless to say, he accepted immediately.

He picked me up on his yellow Annie’s delivery bicycle after work. At 11pm, I would’ve thought most places had closed, but he took me to a part of Beijing that I had never encountered. The people who frequented this night market were those who got off work after most people had gone to bed, mostly young men like him who had come to Beijing in search of work. They only had a chance to eat dinner at midnight and play a few games of pool afterwards. The smell immediately caught my attention; it was a mixture of the glistening sweat on their bare backs after a long day’s work, and vegetables fried in peanut sauce. Although that sounds gross, it was the most down to earth scent I can remember.

During dinner, I asked him how much money he made, not considered a rude question in China. About 200$ a month was the answer.While he stepped outside for a moment, I quickly paid for the meal: only about 3$. Coming back inside, he finished eating and called out for the check. When I explained that I already covered it, he was enraged that I didn’t let him pay for the meal. He worked for his money, whereas he didn’t want me to use money that my parents gave me on him. This was the portrait of the honest worker that I had been searching for.

He sent me home on his bike at 2am; he pedaled while I stood on the bars behind him, holding his shoulders to keep from falling backwards. The quiet of the sleeping city accompanied by the bleakness of the dark gave me an eerie feeling; I thought Beijing never slept. Crossing the highway, we passed by three other guys on their bikes, and he gave out a loud whistle. I heard three whistles back.

Laying down on my couch, I thought back about all that had happened that night. Even though I had lived and visited China countless times, I had never known this side of China before. I couldn’t sleep, and spent all night texting him until 7am when I told him to come over and we fell asleep on my couch.

Return of the Migrant Worker is a post from: The Trouble With Crystal

BTW – this blog is blocked in China.

Twentieth Anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre is a post from: The Trouble With Crystal

1. Spend a few months living as a migrant worker in China
2. Join a competitive ballroom dance team.
3. Learn how to dance like Chris Brown.
4. Live on an ashram in India
5. Live with an ethnic minority tribe and learn their folk traditions
6. Write a book.
7. Live on a panda conservation center in Sichuan, China and research
8. Learn to cook
9. Join a competitive sports team
10. Find out what I want to do for a real job.

Ten things I want to do before getting a real job is a post from: The Trouble With Crystal

A long-time sufferer of gallstones, my grandmother consistently rejected our pleas to undergo surgery. Instead, she spent years trying various traditional Chinese medicine regimens that got her nowhere. Eventually, the pain forced her to give in. When the surgeons opened her body, they found a tumor that had already spread to other organs in her body. The surgeons discussed the situation with my grandfather, and my mother and her siblings. They decided not to tell my grandmother.

She is only sixty-nine. I don’t know who her killer is, whether it is the tumor or the stubborn faith in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The doctors say she has about a month left to live. Every morning and night she receives nutrients through an IV because she is too weak to ingest food. Every day her body is weaker, her hair thinner. She often lays in bed moaning because of the pain, but she refuses to take painkillers — she believes that pain is the body’s way of communicating to her. My parents call her stubborn; I call her strong.

We haven’t told her, and we never will. But she knows. She knows that her time is running out. When we visited her parents’ grave I overheard her praying while kowtowing. She said to herself, “Mother, father, I will be joining you soon”.

So there we were, in front of the elevator, my grandmother, my grandfather, and me; all aware of the fact that it was the last time we would all be together, but suffocated by the necessity to pretend that it wasn’t.

She removed the gold ring from her middle finger and slid it onto my hand.

I said, “Waipo, I will come to see you again and when you are better I will take you to America.”
“Yes, Waipo will get better.” She smiled reassuringly.

The elevator doors opened. I exerted all the energy in my facial muscles to force a smile as I waved goodbye. As soon as the doors closed, the tears fell.

—- To spread support and awareness for cancer, I started a poll fundraiser. Answer the question: how has your life been affected by cancer? either in the comments or on twitter, and I will donate 10 cents for every response received by tomorrow to the American Cancer Association in the name of my grandmother. I will also synthesize the responses and post them for all to read.

Me with my grandmother this summer

My grandmother during Spring Break, well into the disease

What do you say to someone you will never see again? is a post from: The Trouble With Crystal

from: Crystal
date: Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 9:27 AM
subject:  complaints about my love life…

this email is to complain about my sucky and non-existant love life.

So A__ dumped my ass two weeks ago and I haven’t talked to him since. And then I started becoming obsessed with J__ again..so I hung out a lot with him and we were sort of intimate with eachother – not like kissing and making out but more like hugging/cuddling/holding in eachothers arms. anyway – well i thought it was really cute and romantic and he even said that he wanted to kiss me! but then he was like

i actually don’t like you…so i’m like wtf? im so confused! Why did you do all those things – and he was just like Oh I like to do that with girls.

anyway – well it shouldnt matter right because i left for China the next day, but I keep getting distracted by him and unable to concentrate on my research! Like, i will wake up in the middle of the night, hoping to catch him on AIM, or I will call my house between 3 and 5, when I know he is tutoring my brother there…

But whenever I talk to him he just doesnt act very nice to me… so I’m trying to forget about him… and who knows if i even really like him anyway – perhaps its just rebounds…

so then I met up with this guy i barely knew, met once when he was visiting stanford, but he goes to Beijing University. I met him two days ago to just eat and hang out, but then he kept inviting me to do things, like play cards, go karaoke, go to a bar with friends, and actually – I like him and hes really cute…plus he is going to stanford next year as a masters student, so there is actual potential here, as opposed to with J__! But he’s leaving for Shanghai tomorrow…which means my need for immediate affection would have to be staved off for 3 months…

Last of all – When i was complaining about how no one wants to date me, M___ asked me out! haha – well hes kinda doing it as a pity joke, but still, we are nominally boyfriend and girlfriend. But my conditions were that I could date as many other people as i like in the  meantime, and also that i could dump him with no consequences – and he said ok. Dang – haha it makes me want to laugh!
So that is my pathetic love life….im such a loser…

Complaints About My Love Life is a post from: The Trouble With Crystal